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It’s been a week since I started my new job and luckily, since I have regular hours, work days and all that, I’m able to write another blog post to you all! A few updates before we begin; I put my shop back up. For the moment it features older stock because I haven’t had a chance in a long while (being in Japan and all that) but I hope to create some more new work. I will likely put up some of my sketches done while in Japan and I hope to create new stickers and felt brooches. I’m staying away from shrinky dink at the moment because it is pretty unreliable!

Anyway, today I just want to talk to you all about my new job, since I haven’t really elaborated on it very much. While I was in Japan I was very lucky to notice a job advertisement on facebook, for a 2d game artist. If you have been following my blog you might remember a while back I worked on some game dev projects with my friends. One of the people I worked with was part of this company that was advertising on facebook. I thought I’d give it a go. So now I’m here, in Wales, helping to design games for West Coast. It was a lucky break for me and I was fortunate to have already worked on a relevant project, which also gave me a bit of an idea of what to expect.

The company is actually working hard on a kickstarter project right now, to raise money to create a remake of the game D/Generation, originally released in 1991. You can have a look at videos/the demo/etc. here. :)

So, that’s what I’m doing. As I’ve said, I’ve been here only a week, so I wouldn’t say that I have much experience at all. But so far, if you’re interested (perhaps you want to do game art related things and are pretty inexperienced like I was/am?) I’ve spent my days doing tons of sketches and notes for an upcoming game here. It’s been pretty challenging for me as it’s involved drawing landscapes – something I always avoided – as well as buildings, other inanimate objects, character design, etc. For me, character design is probably the easiest thing out of those since, as you may know, I spend so much of my time drawing people.

At first I didn’t have a tablet to use so I focused on doing lots of pen drawing – no colour – on regular printer cartridge paper. But the other day I received my tablet, so now I’m working on creating some mockups and presentations of my designs using Photoshop. It feels very luxurious using Adobe CC, something I never thought I’d get to try out given its monthly fee :)

This afternoon I think I will finish up the character designs that I drew earlier on Photoshop, and I will try to convert some more of my paper sketches into fully coloured digital paintings/illustrations. It is really nice to take stuff from the sketches and to finally add colour to them…

I’m sorry that currently I don’t have any images to show, this is because I’m working on a new game and thus we are keeping things under wraps for now. Perhaps when things kick off a bit more for this particular game, I will be able to show and talk about the artwork.

If you’re hoping to see some new drawings and sketches still, you can have a look on my tumblr, where I’ve put my personal scribbles and bits.

Well, I started writing this a long while ago – and now, I’m home – so I’ll share the short bit that I originally wrote, plus my own update.

So, a long while again, as is usual for my blog at this time. Spring has finally come! I was waiting and waiting in March and then at the beginning of April (I think, it’s been a while though, so…) we finally had some hotter days. Now, the temperature is usually above 20c on a good day, so all is well. It’s probably hotter than the UK is right now. Work-wise, things are as usual. I’m busy a lot of the time and there are many projects to work on and often there isn’t enough time. I hope I can make some better progress on them by the end of this month. Today is Wednesday, so I start at 11am and finish at 8.30pm. It would be 8pm but I decided I’d prefer to have an extra 30 mins break in before my last class so that I can be more prepared and energised for it. While it’s nice getting to sleep in until 9am I do prefer starting early and finishing at a regular time, so I can spend time doing other things in the evening, or seeing friends. At least I have the weekend for that, though. I also have some fun news to tell you all soon, but not yet. More on that later.

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So what has happened since then? Hmm, well, I can’t really remember Spring all that much. I had a couple of days off during Golden Week and my friends and I went to Aomori prefecture, to Lake Towada. At some point we also went to Akita prefecture, to Kakunodate, but I think that was before. Then, Spring was fast, there was lots to do, and summer came around. It got really hot – one day it was 32c, which was way too hot for me! But, it was an experience I guess.

Summer was busy as I was set to finish on June 16th. So, I spent some of my time preparing for that. When I finished work on June 16th, I then had a few days to close everything up, clean up and so on, which was pretty stressful for me.

I’m pretty tired at the moment so I don’t know what else to say, really!

Before leaving Japan I also spent some time with some good friends, and we had good food (sushi) and a party the night before I left Morioka. I also had some kind friends who escorted me to the station to catch my night bus to Tokyo the next evening.

I’m going to miss Japan and I miss a lot of my students too. But I have somewhere to go for the moment and I will definitely be back to Japan whenever I can visit.

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Yesterday, I moved into my new place in Aberystwyth. Well, not new as it is the same home that I stayed in during my masters year. I got a job! I am starting tomorrow. It’s art related. I will elaborate on it soon. It’s a Mon-Fri job which I am happy about – I look forward to having the whole weekend free to meet friends or travel. I’m also hoping to reintroduce my online shop, selling art and crafted things. I will post more when I have more information!

Anyway, thanks for reading this very fragmented post and hope you are all well. More news soon.

Hey friends, it’s been such a long while! I can spend a bit of time online tonight as I won’t need to get up until later tomorrow, so I popped on to wordpress because I have been thinking about updating my blog for a while now. Then, I discovered the beginnings of this old post, from 9th February. It’s now the end of March! So please enjoy the beginnings of my old post and then after that, the start of my new post.

Early February 2015

Life has fallen again into its usual patterns here. I do the work thing in the first, main part of the week. On Saturday night after finishing work I usually crumble to cravings and go get an Indian takeaway. We used to have Indian takeaways every weekend back at home. In the second, smaller part of the week, I try to catch up with chores, study some Japanese, and attempt to negotiate a sort of social life, as much of a social life as possible for a shy, introverted type person like me.

The routine part is good, I suppose, although lately I’ve also been a little stressed about my job. This is mainly because I want to be the best I can be, and I want to deliver worthwhile and exciting lessons to my students so that they’ll enjoy themselves and want to come along. I want to give them something positive.

There are a few events and bits and pieces coming up at work and that’s exciting, because it keeps me busy and gives me new experiences, although I usually end up feeling nervous too.

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Late March 2015

Brief weather update: we may have had the last snow of winter last week. We’ll see – my student said it could even snow in April. I have my fingers crossed because I don’t want to continue with using 5 blankets, onesie, jumper, tracksuit bottoms and a hot water bottle at night. Please hurry up, Spring! I’m looking forward to sakura.

Well, we’ve moved on quite a while from my last post. The events that I wrote were approaching… I can’t really remember what they even were. But, I suppose that means they must have been ok.

As for updates on things like my social life… I think that’s improved somewhat lately. I have gotten to know some friends a bit better and it is nice to feel a part of a group. Unfortunately though, a lot of people are leaving this Spring. Moving back to home countries, or getting jobs in different parts of Japan… I hope they have lots of fun and I wish them all the best. It was lovely to meet them and I hope I can meet them again. Still, more people are moving on soon! I will miss these people!

With the Indian takeaways… I have been trying to convince myself to stop having them for the sake of my health, but I continue. Although I hope I can call myself a little less indulgent than before. Recently I have been enjoying cooking and making weird salads. I have discovered how amazing avocado is and try to find a way to add it into any dish I make, but I am usually too impatient for it to ripen and end up eating weird, hard avocado slices.

I feel like my Japanese study is going well lately. Vocabulary and kanji are good and I have been able to maintain these reasonably well despite spending less time studying them (I want to catch up, though!). Grammar is a stumbling block. I know a lot of people think that immersion and memorisation of sentences is the best way to learn things… despite this, I still enjoy working through a text book and studying grammar. I still get the immersion bit from living within Japan. I do plan to start memorising sentences in the future though (a la AJATT.com), but not now. And that’s okay, because I’m not in any rush to reach N2 level.

Lastly, with art, I have been keeping up a sort of routine in that I usually try to get several hours solid drawing time in every Monday, my 2nd day off. It’s been pretty good. I have tons of ideas, however, yet when I come to execute them I feel confused and not sure how to proceed. The technical bits are ok, but just coming up with a meaningful composition is hard for me. Maybe I’m scared/intimidated, maybe I just don’t have it in me to do that kind of illustrative work – this is something I definitely fear. I should probably start with thumbnails first instead. Try different ways of starting out. Do you think that for some people it is just impossible to do something? Or is it possible to learn something that comes unnatural to oneself? Is this even unnatural to me or am I just lazy? Ok, less questions. I will just keep going and somehow try my best.

This weekend, I have an extra day off so perhaps I will either go explore a new town or I will use this time to super recharge myself, clean everything, catch up on studies and draw loads.

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Recent Links

Portfolio:Yay, I finally updated my portfolio a little bit. My friend sent me a photo of the packaging I designed for him, so I uploaded it to my portfolio along with some recent sketches, and updated my description. If you have any tips about my portfolio (or actually, anything in particular) please let me know.

Tumblr:Since I mentioned that I’ve been keeping up with my art pretty well I thought it makes sense to remind you, my dear friends, this is my tumblr, where you can find all of my sketches.

James Victore’s Youtube:So I found out about this guy last year before I moved to Japan, watched his Skillshare videos, and watched loads of his Youtube videos too. He has even more now! So tonight I’m listening to even more! He’s funny, and very motivational for artists! Please listen and enjoy.

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Thanks as always for reading. I hope you had fun. I am sorry there are no pictures in my Japan based blogs because I am tired and want to listen to videos now! If you want a picture-based experience of my life, I recommend just following my tumblr.

This post I guess is more for personal/posterity reasons, but anyway I thought I would share a few things from the time around my birthday (19th January). Wanna catch up with what I’m doing art-wise? You can find some recent drawings on my tumblr. Most of my drawings done in Japan are using cheap felt tips and cheap pens since I don’t want to spend too much on art supplies, which would take up space/be a pain to transport.

My kind coworker bought me some delicious hot chocolate mix from the import food store and gave these to me a few days before my birthday. These are from Italy I think and they are lovely. I buy them from time to time for when I finish my workday.

On my birthday I decided to head out for a wander and it was very snowy.

I really like the hamburger chain here: Freshness Burger.

I got the chance to speak to my family and caught a screenshot of my dog.

I got a cute mug for my birthday from my lovely friend, perfect for drinking tea. I only just got into drinking milk tea after getting to Japan. Maybe my new love for milk tea has come hand in hand with my newly discovered patriotism…

This is my new favourite thing lately: steamed rare cheesecake from the bakery near the station. It only costs 170 yen (£1) and is soft, spongy and delicious. I love it.

My kind coworker strikes again! On the evening of my birthday we went to a yakiniku restaurant and I tried gyuutan (grilled beef tongue) for the first time. It was alright but not something I would order for myself. I myself ordered karubi – apparently short ribs according to wikipedia. It was super tender and yummy. Oh man, I feel guilty for posting meat on my blog. I still want to be vegetarian. I’m sorry I’m not making a good go of that! For the record, I usually don’t cook meat at home but once I go out this (possibly) evil meat eating beast emerges from within and orders whatever… (please don’t consider me criticising anyone who eats meat, it’s a choice!)

Our last photo of the yakiniku grill. Not much to say here except that yakiniku restaurants are fun and I enjoy being able to BBQ it however I like. I’m glad we got to go on Monday 19th since we hadn’t been for a long long time.

Well, that’s my mini-photo haul. I hope that it was interesting for some of you! Now, it’s Monday 26th. I’m on my day off and tomorrow I’ll be back at work (I do Tues-Sat).

I’m feeling the urge for mini steamed cheesecake now so I might take that opportunity to cycle to the train station… Or perhaps I’ll stay home, haven’t decided yet. Should probably stay home since I need to save my 8000 yen in my wallet to pay my lovely coworker for the internet. Otherwise I’ll have to draw out more money… gah… cheesecake.

It’s been a while; my first post since November. December was a super busy month as I had to help out as usual at the kindergarten, plus I also had to prepare my own Christmas party lessons for my students. I worked until 20th December, and after my final shift I packed, and my coworker and I took the night bus to Tokyo. The next day, we had our flights to the UK. I had a transfer in Copenhagen, which I thought would be 11 hours. Turns out that I had not really read my ticket properly and it was actually 15 hours overnight. I wandered around for the first few hours looking at all the nice food in Copenhagen airport. Then I holed up in a corner of the transfer lounge on a crickety sofa with my blanket and tried to sleep while many people walked past staring, airport buggies drove past and occasionally parked right next to me.

But anyway, I finally got to the UK eventually and was able to spend 9 days with my family before returning to Japan. I got to Japan on 1st January and my coworker and I spent a night in Tokyo. We got the chance to explore Shinjuku (probably fashionable or something), Akihabara (electronics and stuff for people who are very very into anime) and Ginza (crowded, expensive place for window shopping). Now I’m back in Morioka (cold, Northern place) and I start work tomorrow.

As expected, it’s cold here and there’s some snow… but it’s not too bad. Not as bad as it was in December. Today the sky is clear blue and I can even walk around without my coat zipped up. That’ll probably change soon though, I’m sure. In my post before last I was celebrating ‘trouser weather’, but now we’ve reached a point of ‘double-trouser weather’, and maybe we will even reach ‘triple-trouser weather’ soon. I’m not really looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to March when hopefully it’ll start to get warmer. I miss not wearing heavy clothing, and I miss not spending money on heating. The winter months are going to be expensive since a tank of kerosene costs £10 and I’m not sure how long one will last me…

I don’t have that many updates for you all, since I have been off work and resting at home lately, but by tomorrow I expect my life will become hectic once more. I’ve been keeping my tumblr mostly up to date with my drawings and so on, so for the art front you can find all the stuff there. Today, I suppose, is mostly just a regular, everyday life kind of post that probably only my family (and a handful of strange friends) will be interested in. But I’m okay with that!

I suppose I should talk about my new years resolutions. Of course, we all make loads of resolutions and then they all flake away in January. Maybe we hold out to February, even. And some brave souls even manage to keep up their resolutions throughout the year. At least we can see how far I get. I have a few but I have tried to keep them very easy for myself.

Work hard and survive at my job, try to be as good as I can possibly be – but of course without burning myself out.

Once I eventually return to the UK I want to give a proper go at working towards being an artist. I don’t expect to be able to be a full-time artist or anything like that, but I hope that I will get my shop going, keep drawing regularly and try to take part in more cons, competitions and so on.

Make soap. This is perhaps a strange one but I would really like to try making soap, because it seems like fun and I like things that smell good.

Try to save money every month by sending some of my wages into my English bank account. I already do this, but I want to keep doing it, because I would prefer not to be broke once I am in the UK.

Try to do stretches before bed. I am bad with anything to do with exercise, and healthy things. I reckon that if I have ‘do exercise’ as a resolution, it won’t happen, but maybe I can at least start, get 1% there, by beginning to do stretches. I know it sounds very tiny and simple but I have never exercised regularly in my own free time before so… baby steps.

Anyway I hope everyone had a great new year and I hope that 2015 works out well for us all. Let me know if you have any resolutions too :)

I’m just in the bank (name: yuucho). It’s my day off. I’m attempting to send a little bit of my money here back to England so that I can put it away for savings. To do this I got a form to fill in, on which I made multiple mistakes (as I do with English forms too since I seem to often forget which field to fill in and put stuff in the wrong place). I just got called up to negotiate the amount to send back as well as to hear about the fee for the transfer. The lady also said some other stuff but I can’t say that I totally understood. I think it’ll be ok! Wouldn’t be good to have my £500 floating around in nowhere land. I’ll need it at some point for plane tickets or something.

I feel pretty wary about handling my money, budgeting, and unsure how much emergency cash to keep here. I’m probably weird about it all since this is the first time I’ve been truly financially independent. Anyway, it’s the tenth today so it’ll be another eighteen days until payday, so not too long I don’t think. I will be fine until then and will hopefully have some more money spare at the end of the month, too…

12.10PM

I spent about half an hour or so here just going back and forth between the desk. Then the post office people said that I needed an IBAN code, so I had to cycle home and rush to find it on the HBSC website (their guide to finding the code on their internet banking site was outdated of course), and now I’m back here waiting again to get my money sent over. The post office is a lot more busy now, lots of murmuring and friendly elderly people about. One lady talking to me about an expensive-looking umbrella left by the seats.

Oh hooray, I’ve been called up!

I talked to the lady. I think it’s all ok. Just waiting again now. I asked about fees and with ゆうちょ銀行 (yuucho ginkou), the fee is ¥2500 (£14) to send and also I think my bank might take £5 too. Just gonna have to wait and see. And then see if I ever want to do it again. I hope HSBC are nice and don’t decide to sap my money :(

I finished the whole process at 12.30pm.

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Anyway, aside from all the money talk… This weekend has again been pretty busy. On Saturday after work my colleague and I decided to be lazy and eat at Freshness Burger, a chain fast food place. After that we had a brief bout of shopping since she had discovered some cheap fleece tights in a store (which later turned out to slip down all the time while wearing).

On the way home we discovered a group of other foreigners, a couple of whom we had already met before. We chatted and were promptly persuaded to join them at an izakaya. There was 飲み放題, all you can drink, for ¥3000 (£16.50) plus various free dishes to share. The dishes included pizza covered with salad, pasta, soup and also some chicken which was pretty much raw. It tasted how I imagined it to taste – not something I enjoyed that much, I don’t think I’d eat it again! Anyway, it was nice to meet and chat with people from America, the UK, Ireland, and some lovely Japanese acquaintances too. I hope we can meet them again.

On Sunday, the weather was bleak and grey. I ended up waking up early automatically, at 7.30. I can’t remember what I did, really… Oh. I went out to the shops although I can’t remember what for. But on the top floor of Kawatoku department store, I made the lovely discovery of a food event featuring loads of stalls from Hokkaido. As I made my way around the 7th floor, I was handed many, many samples of cheesecake. The food was a little on the pricey side for me so I focused on getting as many samples as possible before returning home.

When I got home, I cooked some risotto and ate together with my coworker, while watching The Darjeeling Limited. I really enjoyed the film but then also was wondering if there are any films of Wes Anderson’s where the protagonist is female. I remembered the girl in Moonrise Kingdom as well as Margot in The Royal Tenenbaums. I think perhaps his films are pretty good when compared with other contemporary Hollywood films. I’m not sure though, and perhaps this is a thought to continue on another day!

I forced my coworker to come back to the food stalls with me again and we did a second wander, together, and bought a couple of sweet treats. The event ends tomorrow though so I really want to go and at least buy something significant, since I don’t know when or if there will be another.

12.45PM

I know I’m supposed to make food pictures look good and stuff but I was never one for presentation. Anyway, it tasted good, I promise. Lots of chilli, some carrot, some left over tofu (I know, not a regular ingredient but I needed to use it up), lots of mushrooms, garlic and more.

I’m just eating up my leftover risotto for lunch but after that I am very tempted to make a quick trip to the aforementioned fair and buy some cheesecake. There was also this strange stall that had pumpkin flakes which could be mixed with milk to make a delicious soup. Since it has pumpkin in it it feels like it has the illusion of being healthy, although I doubt that it actually is ;_; It tasted too good to be healthy.

Later on today, I have a 1 hour lesson to teach, and then my coworker and I are meeting a friend for ramen. After that, who knows? We were going to go for karaoke although I’m not sure if that’s the plan anymore. I would quite like to retire at home and play World of Warcraft for 2 hours, read some Jane Austen and get loads of sleep in time for another busy week ahead.

Art

I hope you all don’t mind, I haven’t been blogging so much about art lately, mainly about life here, since it’s all so different and there are many new experiences constantly happening. That is not to say I’ve stopped drawing though, far from it! I try to update my instagram account with artwork whenever I can, which you can find on the sidebar to the left. I have been drawing more than usual this week and am fairly pleased to feel that I haven’t regressed too much.

Hi all, thought I should make an update since it’s probably been a while. As per usual with life here, lately I’ve been extremely busy with my job, and have also doing a reasonable amount of stuff during the weekend too. Right now it’s 8.30am and I’ll be starting work from 9.15am and finishing at 6.15pm. After that I will be going out with my friends to a restaurant… probably will not stay out late because I am very tired every day. Going to bed early has become a treat for me, not a punishment as it used to be. I love getting into my warm bed and reading a book… What have I become?

So, work is very busy, that’s nothing new I suppose. From this weekend the week of Halloween themed party lessons begins, and so over the next three days or so I will be quickly trying to do all of the preparations along with doing my usual lessons and admin work. We (my colleague and I) have been here just over two months, and it feels like we started ages and ages ago, but I still feel like there’s so much more I need to learn.

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26.10.2014

I made it through the week, and the first two Halloween parties were successful! What a relief. There are a few more, maybe 4-5 next week. This weekend I hope to rest lots. Today I was a little ill so I stayed in bed until after 11am, a really rare thing for me since lately I’ve been waking up automatically at 6.30am every day.

Written from later in the evening… For the remainder of my day, after finally getting up, I ate some indulgent chocolate corn flakes breakfast with milk (the milk here is really good). I then decided to cycle up the main street where I live to find a pretty river lined with a few super shops and cafes. I was recommended by one of my students to check the area out, and found a shop that I loved. I wanted to buy loads of their stuff, but want to save my money until payday… Unfortunately I didn’t have much time and had to head back home in order to eat lunch and make it to the Halloween event on at the place where I work.

I made pasta with pesto and salad for lunch, a dish that I eat almost any time that I cook (not every day as I often have odd working times), because I am lazy and I still haven’t gotten round to buying that many ingredients. After that, I cycled to work to spend a couple of hours observing, participating in and helping at the event there. It started to get a little cold at around 5pm so I decided to cycle back home, put away some stuff and then head to the train station to wander aimlessly around the shops. At the post office, getting cash out, I ran into two Russian ladies I’d seen before around town (there aren’t many foreigners up here!), so I said hi and chatted to them a bit. We exchanged contact info, and they later added me on facebook. Maybe we can become friends?

Anyway, I headed to the station, taking a quick detour to one of my favourite stationery and homeware shops. I am looking forward to future paydays so that I can buy some of the lovely things from the shop; indoor shoes, letter writing kits, even a few zines – although from a quick look I realised I’d have trouble trying to read the handwritten, tiny Japanese. Worth a shot though, right?

At the station I wandered a little, video called my mum and sister, giving them a tour of the shopping centre. I showed them all the dried squid snacks and curry packs in Muji, along with a couple of my favourite other shops, and then gave them a tour of the underground food section – restaurants and grocery stores. I have to admit now that I went to McDonalds for dinner and had a hamburger… after that I bought a cream puff from Beard Papa’s (strange name, I know) and then decided it would probably be time to head home.

At home I showered and got into my slacker clothes, a pair of black tracksuit bottoms and a men’s jumper I bought super cheap on sale in the UK. I watched the film Fargo with my colleague and now here I am, typing away. I enjoyed Fargo and definitely want to make a point of seeing the TV drama version too. I loved the Minnesotan accents and the snowy bleak landscapes. Steve Buscemi is a cool actor too, although I pretty much disliked all the main characters except for the main police lady and her husband. I felt sorry for the lady who was kidnapped and I felt sorry for the man who pretended his wife had died. I think he needed a good friend, or some talking therapy.

Who would have thought that I could spend so much time writing about a fairly uneventful day? Oh well, no need to worry about whether or not I sound boring, because if I am boring then people simply won’t read this, and I’m fine with that!

I hope to go to bed early tonight, reading The Giver by Lois Lowry, maybe call my boyfriend and my family too, and then wake up nice and early tomorrow. Then, I can take my bike and have a more extensive exploration of the bridge/river area. There’s also a shop I want to check out by the city station, although odds are that I won’t be able to afford any of the products actually there. It’ll be nice to look though. I’ve been avoiding spending money lately, afraid maybe, or simply too self-restrained! I’m trying to loosen up and I would like to do a little bit of shopping tomorrow if I may.